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Eckankar Profile Eckankar by Ron J. Bigalke Jr. Founder: Paul Twitchell Founding Date: 1965 Sacred Scriptures: The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad (“Way of the Eternal”) Primary Texts: ECKANKAR—The Key to Secret Worlds and The Tiger’s Fang by Paul Twitchell; A Cosmic Sea of Words: The ECKANKAR Lexicon and The Spiritual Exercises of ECK by Sri Harold Klemp. Headquarters: Chanhassen, Minnesota Unique Terms: Arahata, Chela, ECK, HU, Mahanta, Satsang, Soul Travel, Sri, Sugmad, Vairagi, and Wah Z. HISTORY Paul Twitchell (also known as Paulji or Peddar Zaskq) was born to Jacob and Effie Twitchell in 1908. He was raised in Paducah, Kentucky, where he attended Western State Teachers College and married Camille Ballowe. In 1942 (during the Second World War) he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and served three years with the Navy before moving to New York City and later (1945) to Washington, D.C. In 1950, the Twitchells joined Swami Premananda’s Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism and edited the official publication, The Mystic Cross, of the Self-Revelation Church. Although he was always interested in religion from an early age, joining Premananda’s church was his first full-time experience with Eastern mysticism and the beginning of his spiritual quest for the most ancient religion. In 1955 Premananda asked Twitchell to leave the church. He left both the church and his wife. Eckankar followers believe Tibetan monk Rebazar Tarzs appeared in spirit form to Twitchell in 1951 in the foothills of the Himalayas. Not only was he influenced by Tarzs, but also by Hindu guru Sudar Singh, who he claimed to have met in India in 1935. Singh provided Twitchell with the foundation of Eastern mysticism for the new religion of Eckankar. During the 1950s, he was initiated into Ruhani Satsana, the “Divine Science of the Soul,” and also began studying The Path of the Masters, which was written by Dr. Julian Johnson (a fellow Kentuckian) who studied the teachings of Sawan Singh in India. Suwan Singh systematized the yoga of the audible sound current (Surat Shabd Yoga), which is union of the soul with the divine sound. In the early sixties, Twitchell wrote the manuscript The Tiger’s Fang, which was an account of his travels with Kirpal Singh (an Eastern guru) as his spiritual guide through the spiritual worlds of God. His manuscript was a plagiarism of The Path of the Masters. Kirpal Singh warned Twitchell not to publish The Tiger’s Fang when asked to validate it. In 1963 Singh moved to the United States and introduced Twitchell to his second wife, Gail Atkinson. They married in 1964, and Twitchell left Singh and denied ever having any association with him (for example, the 1967 version of The Tiger’s Fang did not mention Kirpal Singh and all accounts of him were replaced with Rebazar Tarzs). The continuance of his involvement with Eastern and occult practices, and independence from his spiritual guide (Kirpal Singh), led to the formation of Eckankar, which is simply a reworking of the Hindu sect Radhasoami.1 Twitchell is responsible for bringing the popular occult religion of Eckankar as a distinct and independent movement to the modern world. By 1965, Twitchell had already begun conducting Soul Travel workshops in Southern California and initiating many into his teachings. In 1970 Eckankar was established as a nonprofit religious organization. A year later, Paul Twitchell died of a heart attack. At the Fifth World-Wide Seminar of Eckankar, Twitchell’s wife claimed her deceased husband appeared to her in a dream and revealed to her that the new spiritual leader was Darwin Gross. In 1972, Gail Atkinson Twitchell married Gross. Their marriage ended in divorce after five years. Gross THE BEST RESOURCE COLLECTION ON CULTS AND RELIGIONS The Watchman Fellowship Profile • Over 100 Profiles Notebook provides you with an ex- • Over 400 pages of in- tensive personal library of informa- formation tion about cults, new and alterna- • The history and pri- tive religions, world religions, and mary teachings of religious leaders. You will have at each group your fingertips over twenty years of • A Christian response research to answer your questions, to deepen your faith strengthen your faith, and improve and enhance your out- your witness to others. reach Click here to order your copy of the watchman fellowship profile notebook Be sure to also order your free subscription to the Watchman Fellowship Profile. Several times each year you will receive a new, four-page Profile that you can add to your Profile Notebook, as well as the latest news from Watchman Fellowship. Click here to order your free subscription! Eckankar, page 2 served from 1971-1981, until his advisory council (the Ancient Order of the Vairagi ECK Masters) recommended he cease service as Living ECK Master. In 1981 Gross was replaced by Harold Klemp, who is the current Mahanta, the Living ECK Master.2 Klemp “is responsible for continuing the development of the Eckankar teachings. His mission is to help people find their way back to God.”3 Members of Eckankar can be found throughout the world. The average attendance at worldwide seminars is 10,000. In 2001, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York conducted “the first large-scale national survey of religious identification conducted among Americans in the twenty-first century.”4 The survey indicated that Eckankar members were 0.01% of the United States population and that membership increased by 30% from 1990 (18,000) to 2001 (26,000). Worldwide estimates of membership range from 50,000 to 3,000,000.5 Repeated requests for definite membership figures from Eckankar headquarters were ignored. Perhaps the 50,000 square foot “Temple of ECK” in Chanhassen, Minnesota is a good indicator of total adherents and the fact that members can be found in over 100 countries. DOCTRINES Eckankar claims to be the most ancient teaching known to man since it alleges to address what always was and always will be. Sri Harold Klemp, the current leader of Eckankar has stated, “There are many routes we can take to heaven . the Spiritual Exercises of ECK will help you to find your own custom-made approach to the Kingdom of God.”6 However, Twitchell had previously written, “It is not possible to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven except through the teachings of ECKANKAR.”7 Monism: Monism means “all is one.” It is an explanation of experiences resulting in an altered state of consciousness. The idea is dissolution of any distinctions between the individual and the experience.8 Since only one Reality (see “Sugmad” below) is believed to exist, then any good or evil manifestations all belong to the same Reality. Faith is in an all-encompassing Reality. “All roads lead to Rome,” since there is one ultimate Reality. Hinduism refers to this as Sat-Chit-Ananda, which is the “ecstasy of consciousness aware of itself.” Since there is only one Reality, man is not under a moral law. Man ignores his sinful condition and any awareness of personal sin. To believe in good or evil is a dualistic concept that is repulsive. Since “all is one,” everything not part of God is an illusion. The material relationship to God is a manifestation that, in a sense, denies the reality of matter. God: The sacred name of God is “Sugmad.” The Sugmad is nothing more than a sleeping mass of energy that exploded into billions and billions of individualized parts of consciousness. It does not manifest as a personality and is neither assumed to be male or female, but is the everlasting ECK. The ECK (also called Divine Spirit or Holy Spirit) sustains all life.9 ECK is always emanating from beyond creation to creation, and connects the chelas (spiritual students) to the heart of the Sugmad. The ECK manifests in two aspects: “Inner Light” (“a reflection of the atoms of God moving in space”) and “Inner Sound” (“the Audible Life Current that carries Soul back home to God”).10 Therefore, another name for ECK is the “Religion of the Light and Sound of God” and also means “Co-worker with God.”11 Humanity: The individualized parts of consciousness resulting from the exploding Sugmad became souls entering the material world. Sometimes called the “true self” or “Tuza,” the soul is the inner, most sacred part of a person. It exists before physical birth and lives after the death of the physical body. The soul is the creative center of its own world. The soul has a spark of divinity, which allows it to know, perceive, and see all things. The soul can exist and travel apart from both the body and mind, which are part of the illusionary world. By entering various planes in Eckankar, the soul is able to understand itself as pure spirit. Karma/Reincarnation: Karma is “the spiritual law of cause and effect.”12 Good karma will lead individuals on an upward evolution toward perfection, whereas bad karma brings regression to a lower state of life. As in almost all monistic eastern religions, bad Karma is accumulated through enslavement to any of “the five passions of the mind: lust, anger, attachment, greed, and vanity.”13 Reincarnation (sometimes called “the wheel of transmigration”) is the belief that people have lived hundreds or thousands of prior lives and that they will continue to live hundreds or thousands of lives until the soul reaches a state of perfection. Multiple lives are required to rid oneself of bad karma so the ECKist (chela) can achieve enlightenment. It is a cyclical process that is the result of people’s karma. The Mahanta’s mere presence can remove ages of karmic debt.
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